Officer identified in fatal Cockeysville shooting

Baltimore County police on Tuesday identified the officer who shot and killed a Cockeysville man after police said he refused to drop a knife.

The department identified the officer as Officer First Class Gibbons, a 19-year veteran assigned to the Cockeysville Precinct Patrol Division.

Baltimore County does not provide officers' first names in such cases in keeping with a police union agreement, but online salary records show that Officer Gould Gibbons III has been a member of the department since 1994.

Gibbons has not been involved in any previous shootings, the department's statement said. He was placed on routine administrative duty while the incident is reviewed.

Police said Gibbons fatally shot James Robert Rogers Jr., 49, of the 10100 block of Daventry Drive in Cockeysville, after officers responded to Rogers' parents' home Saturday night for an assault call.

Rogers' father had called 911, stating his son was threatening him and his wife with a knife before taking the knife with him into the house's garage, police said.

Officers confronted Rogers, and when he "refused to drop a knife," Gibbons shot him, police said.

Rogers' father declined to comment Tuesday.

A White Marsh man was fatally shot by a county officer last month outside his apartment after police said the man resisted arrest and attempted to take another officer's gun. A woman was shot by another officer in Pikesville in May and survived.